Of course that “knowing” takes a great deal for granted. Given his age and his upraising by struggling European immigrant parents in what a Brooklyn neighborhood was like in the 1940’s, that ‘knowing” may be a generational leap for most.
Brooklyn’s narrow neighborhood streets with cars on both sides, were the playgrounds of the times. That’s where such games as punch and stick ball, three man-touch football and basketball hoops on telephone poles were in play constantly stopping only to let cars pass, when it got too dark to play, and/or when somebody’s Mom yelled “dinner”.
The local schools were full of teachers who were taught to teach. Overwhelmingly women, they’d made the choice – teaching not secretary or nurse. And teach they did knowing that there was a Mom at home to make certain homework was done correctly and that problems would be dealt with respectfully and effectively.
A life with plenty of reading. The world of the “left” a powerful influence in a poor home: the efforts of workers to unionize, the demands for a living wage, for equal opportunity, the right to be heard, the need to influence the decisions of government, to withstand the pressures downward by a dominant capitalist America led by the power of the Robber Barons of major industry.
All of this in the books he devoured…inclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, Karl Marx, Norman Thomas…bringing that recent history and its continuation right into his mind as World War II dominated his landscape.
And this a little later on, that the war effort and the brilliance and determination of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought it all into perspective. He let the Robber Barons make money as he TOTALLY mobilized the power of industry behind the war effort. They made money. Workers made money. Women worked alongside of men.
America won – and changed.
And he saw what prosperity could mean.
Returning veterans went to school on the GI Bill. Free education. Growing suburbs as workers could earn enough to live out of cities…send their kids to college…prosper.
Laws controlling, stabilizing, progressing…equalizing power and opportunity. The years of the 1950’s and 1960’s an example of what social capitalism could do to make equal opportunity available and successful.
Yes there was the Cold War and fears of atomic bombs destroying the world. But prosperity and growth nonetheless.
Essentially that’s the man who refuses to ignore the overwhelming value of liberalism to the American community even if he chooses to call those values progressive rather than liberal.
That’s the man showing not rage but outrage…the missing element in 21st Century America. Outrage. Enough of the control of money and power! Enough of healthcare that has no cost and expense barriers as the industries involved control at will!
Enough of the truth that one-tenth of one percent of Americans control more of our nation than the rest of us combined! Enough that colleges are money-makers and student loans crush the future before it begins.
Enough!
Impossible to ignore such truths, people are voting to support the outrage even if solutions seem all but impossible to imagine in a country with a government which has been bought into silence and stasis.
Recognizing that outrage is let loose at last…that calling out the truth can be the message of a ‘political revolution’. Can it be enough of an answer? Be more than a slogan?
Questions to ponder even as we recognize that Bernie has the ‘chutzpah’ to imagine that it can.
“Bernie equals (=) Brooklyn Chutzpah”
Hey, not just Brooklyn but all the boroughs.